Researchers find there’s marketing opportunity in using plain language

But what if these organisations were up front about what consumers were giving up in return for free services? Researchers at the University of Georgia in the US wanted to know how much trust tech companies gain with more transparent user terms. 

“You have these thousands of word-long contracts in a language that most ordinary people cannot understand,” explains Tari Dagogo-Jack, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the university. 

“So, if you can rewrite this statement or rewrite sections of the contract in words that everyone can understand, then they should be more willing to trust you. But it’s a double-edged sword.” 

Dagogo-Jack and his co-author, Legal Studies Associate Professor Tim Samples, recently published their findings in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. They found that transparency increases consumer trust, but only to a point. 

Average social media contract is almost 7,000 words  

Decades of research has shown that people believe and trust things that are easy to understand, yet the average social media contract in the US is 6,712 words in dense legalese. 

“There was a symbolic interpretation of providing these summaries of the contracts and then there was the literal interpretation of what the contracts say,” Dagogo-Jack notes. “Symbolically, the fact you are making it easy for me to understand is a great thing … most companies aren’t doing that, so they’re clearly on my side. 

“On the other hand, because they’ve made it easy for me to understand, now I can read literally what they’re saying – ‘I’m taking your data, I can use it however I want, and you have no legal recourse’. Obviously, I don’t want to give my data to a company like that.” 

The space between the consumer perception of trustworthiness stemming from merely providing these summaries and the actual trust of consumers – once they read through the [clear-language] contract synopses – provides takeaways for marketers, consumer groups and policymakers. 

“This can be a marketing opportunity,” Samples believes. “[Providing plain language summaries] provides a positive message around your contracting. You’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re not like the rest of these guys. We do things a little differently. We’re not trying to bruise you in this contracting relationship … we’re doing something reasonable here’.” 

You can find out more about the study here.